


Greater Fools

by Anonymous



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Deathly Hallows Spoilers, Half-Blood Prince Spoilers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-08
Updated: 2017-02-08
Packaged: 2018-09-22 20:02:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,380
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9623297
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: With his death now looming on the horizon, Albus Dumbledore has but one regret.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lah_mrh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lah_mrh/gifts).



Albus Dumbledore looked down at his withered, blackened hand. He had been the worst kind of sentimental fool to try on the Gaunt family ring. Hallows or no Hallows, he should have known that the Horcrux would be cursed--and truth be told, a part of him certainly had. But the siren song of the Resurrection stone had proved irresistible. At least this time, it was his own life that would be the price for his foolishness.

It was, of course, perfectly reasonable that he should die. Wizard lifespans were impressively long, and while he was no Nicholas Flamel--nor would he want to be--he had spent no small amount of years in the world. He had done and seen so much, touched so many lives and shaped so many young minds and influenced so much of wizarding society; there would be no pretending that Albus Dumbledore of all people had been unfairly robbed of years.

That wasn't to say, of course, that he would've have preferred a few more.

That, at least, wasn't pure selfishness. The issue of Lord Voldemort still remained, after all, and the death sentence now hanging over Dumbledore's head meant that his scheming finally had its deadline. There could be no more dithering, no more fretting about whether or not Harry Potter was still too young to undertake the task that lay ahead of him or that the boy might not be able to do what must be done when he inevitably discovered the truth. In less than a year, Severus Snape would need to kill Dumbledore in order to spare young Draco Malfoy from carrying out his master's orders, and once the deed was done, Voldemort's rise would be swift and crushing. Harry Potter would have to be ready, and so Dumbledore would have to prepare him in such a short amount of time.

Just because it wasn't pure selfishness, though, didn't mean that there was nothing selfish to it at all. No, there was no denying that there remained in him the very same sense of selfishness that had compelled him to put on the ring in the first place. Dumbledore was no great fan of the idea that he would die so soon, no matter how prepared he was for his own demise; though he had done so much with his life in the decades since he had come to his senses and left the worst of his youthful arrogance behind, his impending death sentence had brought into sharp focus just how many possibilities that he had neglected to pursue over the years. He had done so much with his time, and yet he had failed to do so much of what he would've wanted as a younger man.

With a graceful movement that belied his age, Dumbledore rose from his desk in the Headmaster's office, and Fawkes' beady phoenix eyes followed him as he walked toward his Pensieve. If the bird knew what he intended to do, perhaps that stare was meant in judgement; if so, Dumbledore was none too bothered. Indulgence may have put the expiration date upon his life, but _this_ particular indulgence, he knew, would be safe. It was a restrained foolishness, a harmless indulgence that he had allowed himself many times in the past, and it was one that he expected to recur at least a few more times between now and the day when his life came to its end.

Dumbledore sank into the shimmering silver substance inside the Pensieve, falling down into the swirl of memory that he'd collected over the years. Many of them were his, but many more had been borrowed from strangers--witches and wizards and Muggles alike whose recollections had furthered his plans in some way. Tonight, though, it was his own past--his own secrets--that he descended into, and the warm glow of a fond recollection warmed him as surely as the remembered sun that lit the scene.

When his feet were planted firmly upon solid ground, Albus Dumbledore found himself standing in a familiar clearing. It was a place he had not seen in decades, though it was one he knew by heart nonetheless. There was something fitting about that, he figured; this particular corner of Godric's Hollow had long since been built up, the meadow plowed over and turned into quaint residences for wizards subtle enough to handle Muggle neighbors, and the fact that he could only revisit this field in the memory of this particular moment made a certain kind of sense.

There was nothing to be gained by revisiting this memory outside of the Pensieve, after all.

He was not alone in this field of memory, of course. His younger self--younger by so many years that they hardly seemed to be the same person anymore--stood several meters away in the shadow of a massive yew, clustered closely with another youth. The young man was only seventeen--barely of age, fresh out of school, and woefully ignorant of what world had in store for him. He was just like every other student that Dumbledore had nurtured at Hogwarts over the years, brimming all the naivety and arrogance of a particularly talented youth.

And the young man standing beside him... Dumbledore's vision focused sharply on the figure, just as it always had in life or recollection. Gellert Grindelwald was an already impressive figure at the age of sixteen, though it was obvious in retrospect that he was more unhinged than at first he seemed. He was an undoubtedly attractive young man, tall--perhaps half a foot taller than Albus had been, indeed--and well-groomed with a cherubic face and a polished sense of style. But what had really drawn Albus to him--what had really caught the eye of the woefully bored, wildly self-important young man that he had been at the turn of the century--was the other wizard's mind.

He had been, in a word, astounding. Never before had Albus met a person--witch or wizard, young or old, British or foreign--who had been able to match him, but Gellert had gone so far as to outwit and outperform him on several occasions. (Not, of course, on the occasion that mattered, but that was a memory unwelcome here.) He had been so impressed, so utterly astounded at finally having a companion who could do what he himself could, that he simply didn't recognize the depths of his feelings. Not at first, anyway.

But on that--on _this_ \--summer day beneath the yew, Albus had known. From across the field, the Headmaster of Hogwarts watched it all play out again with a quietly aching heart, and as he drew closer, the details of the young men coming more clearly into view with each passing step. Dumbledore could see the faint blush upon his younger self's cheeks--a flush he was sure that he hadn't realized was visible at the time--and it was so familiar to him after so many years of watching his students come of age that he found it rather amusing that it took him so long to realize exactly what it meant.

He had been so nervous, he recalled, once he had realized what his affection for Gellert truly was. A large part of his sense of self had changed in a very short period of time, like a tectonic plate suddenly shifting beneath the surface of the earth, and the realization was entirely thanks to Gellert himself.

His biggest concern once he understood the feelings, then, was whether or not the other man felt the same.

Dumbledore's eyes surveyed Grindelwald's youthful face for perhaps the thousandth time. There was, as there always was in this memory, a knowing smirk barely hidden on the Dark Wzard's lips, and it was an expression that a younger Albus had so often mistaken for flirtatiousness in the coming days--but one that he now realized was something far more sinister than it had seemed.

The Headmaster watched Gellert's lips move. "Are you alright, Albus?" Though he wasn't yet close enough to hear Grindelwald's soft, intimate tone, Dumbledore knew the words by heart, and he could still remember the shiver that they sent up his adolescent spine.

(A part of him wished the words still made him feel that way. It had been so long.)"Fine," his younger self answered quickly. "A simple chill."

Grindelwald's knowing smile clearly came easily to him, a veneer of gentility masking a dearth of morality. "It's a very warm day, Albus. You're flushed absolutely flushed from the heat."

The acknowledgement of his reddened cheeks only made them redder still, and Grindelwald knew exactly what he was doing. He took a step forward, pushing himself without question into the other man's space, and Dumbledore watched his own head tilt back as he looked up at the friend with whom he was undeniably in love.

"Do you know why I asked you to meet me here?" Grindelwald inquired softly, and even at the time, Albus had thought him standing _much_ too close for such a question.

Dumbledore had, of course, been sure of why they were meeting there, or so he had thought; they were wizards--extraordinary wizards doing extraordinary magic--and as such, they needed as much privacy as they could get. And the yew put them well out of the way of any prying eyes, either magic or Muggle... but in the moment after Gellert had put the question to words, suddenly Albus had not been as sure. So the young man simply shook his head. For the first time in his life, he didn't think he had the words.

"I don't want anyone to see us," Gellert murmured softly, so close now that he was barely speaking--and still, Albus clung to every word, committing them to memory so fervently that now, decades upon decades later, the Headmaster of Hogwarts need not be in earshot to hear them precisely.

Dumbledore still remembered how the word _why_ had surged to the front of his mind--and the way he had beat it back down into silence, desperate to make sure he didn't overstep his bounds. He would've never forgiven himself if he had destroyed their friendship over a silly little crush.

But Grindelwald had been so close, close enough that Albus could focus on nothing else but the other man's face--the chiseled cheekbones, the gorgeous dark eyes, his _lips_ far too near Albus' own--and from where he stood in the memory, the Headmaster could count scant few inches left between them. Had he come upon students standing so closely in the halls, he would have been obligated to separate them, and part of him longed to separate these two even now, if only to save himself the heartbreak.

(But no, he would never do that, not even if he could. As bittersweet and painful as the memory was, he savored it nonetheless.)

"I am so grateful that I came to Godric's Hollow, Albus," Grindelwald said softly. "How could I have lived if I had never met you?"

Seventeen-year-old Albus Dumbledore had only a split second to reassure himself that Gellert had merely meant to appreciate their friendship, the way their magical ability and their intellect meshed so well... and then the lips that he had been trying so desperately not to look at were on is own, soft and warm and _kissing him_ , and it had seemed as if all thought disappeared.

The memory, thankfully, did not. The Headmaster of Hogwarts watched the two young men--one, himself; the other, the worst Dark wizard to rise until Lord Voldemort filled the power vacuum he left behind--and didn't know what he was feeling now any more than he had known what he was feeling any of the other times he had watched them. There was bitter regret; Gellert Grindelwald was a bigot, a murderer, and a tyrant, and even if he _had_ ever shown remorse for what he'd done, it erased none of his crimes. But there was also deep appreciation; he had taught Albus so much about himself, and had, in a sense, saved him from becoming the Dark wizard he easily could have been... though not without a price.

He watched the younger Albus kiss the other wizard tentatively, because a part of him was terrified that this might be some kind of trick--and perhaps it was, in a sense--until finally Grindelwald pulled back. They stared at one another for a moment, no words but so much emotion passing between the two of them, and when Gellert moved in for the second time, Albus didn't waste a heartbeat in pulling him closer, hungry for the affection that he had only so recently learned he craved.

With a heavy heart, the Headmaster closed his eyes and, with a level of concentration rather difficult to achieve under the circumstances, pulled himself from the memory. There was really nothing more to see than that, after all--or else nothing more that he wished to view. There had been no words after their kiss, not for some time indeed. Explanations had come later, along with whispered declarations of love, hand-holding that had seemed daring and reckless at the time, and touches far less suited for daytime meadows and the ground beneath yew trees. If anyone else had ever caught on to what feeling lay nestled between the two of them, no one ever said a word.

Standing once more in the familiar comfort of his office, Dumbledore turned his back on the Pensieve with a sense of silent solemnity, and Fawkes gave him a knowing look. And he smiled at the bird, brimming with sorrow and yet in a sense consoled.

He had been a fool to put the Gaunt ring on and a fool to think that the Resurrection stone would give him anything but a heartbreaking shadow of the loved ones he had lost.

And, now that he knew that his death lay on the horizon, he was perhaps a greater fool for wondering just how long he would have to wait before he would have a chance to meet Gellert Grindelwald again.

This time, perhaps, they might get a second chance.


End file.
